But that was a recipe for its own disaster. At best, he would be worried sick, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he stormed the offices and carried her out of the building.
No, calm was the best option on all fronts. She drew in a breath, tuning her ears to the sounds of the office, wondering what was being said inside Jason’s office, if he’d had a heads-up about the missing money over the weekend or if Fredo DeLuca had waited until Monday morning to make a point.
To embarrass Jason at the office, to prove he was in control.
The office had returned to a quieter version of its normal hum, everyone going through the motions of being back at work despite the pall that now hung over them. Those who had offices returned to them, the rest of the staff back at their cubicles across the hall from Abby’s office.
She pulled a folder out of her inbox. It was full of checks waiting to be signed, first by her and then by Jason. She removed a pen from her desk and was lifting it to begin signing when a crash sounded from inside Jason’s office.
She stood without thinking, her body caught in fight or flight mode as voices rose from the other side of the wall. The entrance to Jason’s office was forty feet down the hall, but they shared a wall and Abby held her breath as someone barked what sounded like an order. It was followed by a soothing murmur she recognized as coming from Jason.
The employees had heard it, too, their cautious return to normal aborted as they turned their eyes toward the glass wall of her office. She didn’t know how to tell them that in spite of her position directly under Jason in the company hierarchy, she didn’t have the first clue what to do.
Should she evacuate the office? Get everyone out in case things escalated between Jason and Fredo DeLuca? Between Bruce Frazier and the muscle that was there to protect DeLuca?
If it hadn’t been for the guns, she would have felt confident telling everyone to sit tight, would have had reasonable assurance that no one was in danger.
But the executive offices were now filled with testosterone-laden men carrying deadly weapons, and she knew something the rest of the staff didn’t know — namely, that five billion dollars and Jason Draper’s reputation was at stake.
It was a situation she hadn’t counted on when she’d played out this day in her mind.
She was preparing to sit down in her chair and return to work, the noise from Jason’s office having quieted, when the staff swiveled their heads toward the back of the hall.
She moved around her desk and stopped at the doorway leading to the hall. Fredo DeLuca and his men were making their way up the hall from Jason’s office. They moved with purpose, their faces placid, like they were exiting a favorite restaurant after a nice meal. One of them still had a gun drawn, and Sarah shrunk back from them as they passed.
Fredo’s gaze met hers and held as he passed. She knew then that he knew everything — that he knew about her and Max, about what Jason had done to them before Abby fled to Mexico, maybe even about the money.
He’d almost reached the lobby with his men when Jason appeared outside his office.
He stalked down the hall, his face flushed. He looked uncommonly disheveled, his normally smooth hair rumpled, his suit jacket wrinkled at the lapel, tie askew.
Bruce Frazier emerged, gun in hand, behind Jason, who had stopped a few feet away from Abby’s office. They watched as Fredo DeLuca and his men disappeared around the corner into the lobby.
Abby could have heard a pin drop as everyone turned their eyes on Jason, still standing in the hall. She saw now that he was breathing his hard, his eyes feverish with panic.
Abby didn’t know how much time passed before he seemed to realize everyone was staring. He looked around, taking in his employees like he was seeing them for the first time, like he was almost surprised to find them still there.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he roared. “Do I pay you to stare? To be in my business? Get back to work or I’ll fire every one of you!”
Everyone averted their eyes, went through the motions of tapping at their keyboards, picking up their phones, shuffling papers on their desks, anything to hide the shock of watching Jason Draper — a man who had never once raised his voice in the office, who had always maintained a persona that was more benevolent leader than executive shark — lose his shit after being confronted by armed men in his own office.
His hands were balled into fists at his side as he turned his head to look at Abby.
She stepped back and closed her door before returning to her desk. He was still standing in the hall, his eyes focused on something she couldn’t see — maybe nothing at all — down the hall.
He looked so much less imposing when he was afraid, and she realized she wasn’t nearly as afraid of Jason — even with Frazier standing behind him with a gun — as she had been of Fredo DeLuca.
In fact, it wasn’t Jason she thought about at all as she tried to return her attention back to her work — it was DeLuca, and the calm humor in his eyes as he passed her.
Like he knew all her secrets.
Like it was only a matter of time before he used them.
Twenty-One
Max watched Abby look nervously around Herbs & Rye as they waited for their drinks. She hadn’t been sure about going out, especially after what had happened at work, but Max had a feeling it was exactly what she needed.
She’d been shaken when she’d come to his place at the end of the day. She hadn’t wanted him to see it — had forced a smile when she greeted him and then calmly recounted the events with DeLuca at the Tangier — but it had been written on her face from the moment she walked in.
He didn’t push. She needed to prove herself strong. He wouldn’t undermine that, despite the fact that it had taken Herculean effort not to pull her into his arms, to hold her face in her hands and make sure she was really okay.
By the time she’d finished recounting the story of Fredo DeLuca and his goons barging into the executive offices, their stand-down with Frazier, the outburst by Jason after they left, Max had needed a stiff drink and a distraction as badly as Abby.
And if ever there was time to break their embargo on being a couple in public, this was it. Fredo DeLuca already knew about them, and Jason had bigger problems now. Max had watched for a tail to be safe, but they hadn’t been followed, and he could only assume the skinny man he’d cornered in the stairwell the week before had delivered his message to DeLuca.
They waited in silence as their waitress set down their drinks. “Anything else I can get you?”
Max looked at Abby. “You hungry?”
She shook her head, her face was pale and drawn.
Max looked up at the waitress. “We’re good for now.”
She returned to the bar to chat up the bartender.
Abby took a drink from the glass in front of her. “Your friend’s gone,” she said with a shadow of a smile.
“My friend?”
“Amanda. The cocktail waitress who used to work here.”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember her.”
She laughed softly. “I do. She was practically crawling into your lap the last time we had drinks here.”
He tried to remember the last time they’d had drinks at Herbs & Rye, then realized it had been the night he’d accepted he was in love with Abby, that he’d been in love with her his whole life.
That he couldn’t run from it anymore.
“The only thing I remember about that night is you,” he said. “Looking across this table at you and realizing you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, that everything I’d been doing since I got back from Afghanistan had been designed to keep me from acknowledging it.”
She reached across the table for his hand. “You’re a smooth talker, Max Cartwright.”
He leaned forward and raised her hand, turned it over to leave a kiss in her palm. “I mean every word.”
She smiled. “I know.”
The fact that she remembered the waitres
s, that she probably remembered all the waitresses, made him feel like someone was turning a vise around his heart. Had she been aware of her feelings for him while he’d been running from his? Had his sexual exploits hurt her? Had she been pretending when she’d laughed it off, called him a man-whore?
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She looked surprised. “For what?”
“For those years after I came back, for how I acted, for what an idiot I was.”
She shrugged a little, and he was taken back to all the times she’d made the exact same motion when she’d been a little girl and someone tried to offer her sympathy. It had been a way of acknowledging what was being said without acknowledging her pain.
It was a way of doing that now.
It also meant she didn’t want to talk about it. Abby had never had any interest in mining her pain. She was all action, all forward motion. He wondered when it would catch up to her, and hoped he’d be there when it did.
“So what’s next?” Abby said, changing the subject.
“Next?”
“With Jason and DeLuca and the Syndicate.”
“That’s not our problem,” Max said. “We did our part. They’ll take it from here.”
She hesitated. “Will you miss it?”
“Miss putting up with Farrell Black’s shit and committing grand larceny, you mean?”
She smiled. “You know what I mean. This has occupied all your time, and since I don’t imagine you going back to your previous full-time job — ”
“The Army?”
She waved away the question. “Gambling, drinking… the other stuff.”
“No,” he said. “I’m definitely not going back to that stuff.”
“Then what?” she asked.
He leaned back. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
It wasn’t a lie. He’d been busy dealing with Jason, trying to keep Abby safe.
But there had been a little voice in the back of his head that had been asking the same question.
What now?
He’d just been ignoring it, because he didn’t have an answer.
And he didn’t like not having answers.
“Has Nico asked you about running Vegas when this is all over?”
He laughed. “Definitely not. They’re going to forge a partnership with DeLuca the minute they get Jason out of the equation.”
“What if DeLuca still doesn’t want a partnership with the Syndicate?”
He looked at her. “Do you know something I don’t?”
She seemed to turn inward, like she was remembering something. “He doesn’t strike me as someone who’s going to swallow the Syndicate’s rules, that’s all,” she finally said. “And if DeLuca can’t take over the territory, and Jason is out of the picture, the Syndicate will need someone.”
He couldn’t hide his surprise. “Are you suggesting I go to work for the Syndicate?”
She sighed. “I don’t know what I’m suggesting. They’re just not what I expected.”
“You haven’t met them,” he said.
“No, but I’ve met Angel Vitale, and it’s hard to imagine her with someone like Jason or DeLuca.”
He laughed. “Are you suggesting Nico Vitale and the other Syndicate leaders are nice because Nico has a nice wife?”
“It’s not that far-fetched, is it?” she asked. “And it’s not just Angel. It’s the private planes and the organizational structure. It’s all so… corporate.”
“But it’s not corporate,” he said. “They’re in the same business as Fredo DeLuca. We can’t forget that.”
“The same business, but not run the same way,” she said. “Isn’t that what taking Jason down is about? Forcing the DeLucas to play by the Syndicate’s rules?”
He raised his eyebrows. “A kinder, gentler Mob?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Isn’t it kind of true?”
He thought about Nico’s iron reserve, about the violence that lurked in Farrell Black’s eyes. “I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t think they’d hesitate to kill if they believed the situation called for it.”
“And that’s a deal breaker?”
He met her gaze. “Wouldn’t it be for you?”
She drained her drink, rubbed the condensation that was forming on the side of the glass. “I once would have thought so, but now I’m not as sure.”
“Why?”
It took her so long to speak that he thought she might not answer.
“I never would have believed Jason capable of such atrocity,” she said, her voice soft. “It made me realize that I’ve been naive.”
“You’re not naive.” He didn’t say the rest: that she’d seen evil up close, that she’d been its victim all her life.
“I think I have been,” she said. “I thought bad people made themselves obvious. I thought they were easy to spot.”
He knew she was thinking about her father, and he reached for her hand across the table and squeezed. “And now?”
“Now I know that kind of badness is easy, impossible to sustain. It’s the other kind — the kind that hides behind a smiling face, behind the eyes of a friend — that’s the most dangerous.”
“And how does that play into your changing position on violence?” he asked.
“The world is full of violence — against the helpless, the innocent. Against women and children.” Her voice was full of bitterness. “It’s hard to see its eradication — however it comes about — as a crime.”
His heart felt like a stone in his chest. She’d seen more evil, more violence, in her lifetime than anyone should have to. Had seen it come from corners of her life that were supposed to represent trust and safety.
This had been a mistake. The wrong kind of distraction. She was tired and overwhelmed, the events of the past few weeks catching up to her on the heels of Jason’s outburst at work.
He reached for his wallet and threw cash on the table, then slid out of the booth and extended a hand. “Come on.”
She took his hand. “Where are we going?”
He pulled her to her feet and kissed her forehead. “Were going home. I’m going to draw you a bath and make you a hot cup of tea. Then I’m going to hold you while you sleep and dream happy things.”
She looked up at him and laughed. “Is that an order?”
“Yes, yes it is.” He pulled her close to his side as they started for the door.
Twenty-Two
Abby walked into the lobby the morning after Fredo DeLuca’s visit half-expecting the executive offices to be in chaos. It seemed impossible that the events of the day before could pass without some kind of visible fracture in the office, but when she stepped out of the elevator, it was quiet.
The only nod to Jason’s confrontation with DeLuca was an additional man stationed at a desk next to the one occupied by Bruce Frazier. The new guard was every bit as giant as Frazier, although without the vacuous gaze that turned her skin cold.
“Good morning,” she said.
Frazier stared at her as she passed. The new guy glanced up and returned his focus to his phone.
She continued into her office and set down her stuff, collapsing into her chair even before going for a cup of coffee. She was exhausted — emotionally, mentally, even physically. She felt like she’d been hit with a battering ram.
And it wasn’t over yet.
Her thoughts turned to Max, the one safe refuge available to her. He’d stayed calm in spite of the fact that he’d had to work to keep his expression even when she recounted DeLuca’s visit to the Tangier.
She’d seen his fury in the tightening of his jaw, the tick jumping in his cheek as he clamped his mouth shut to avoid saying something he’d regret.
He’d done it for her, taking it a step further when they returned to her house by running her a hot bath and bringing her tea, pulling her into his arms when they’d gone to bed. For awhile, it had felt like nothing could touch her.
This morning had been a
reality check. As much as she wanted to hide from what had happened at work, staying home would only make things worse. Plus, after Jason’s meltdown, she had no idea what state he’d be in. The employees would need someone to keep everything on an even keel.
She sighed and started unpacking her bag for the day, trying to lose herself in the movements, to get her mind to a place of calm before everyone else arrived with questions she wouldn’t be able to answer honestly.
She was placing her purse inside the bottom drawer of her desk and preparing to get a cup of coffee when Jason passed the glass wall of her office. She wondered where he was going — he usually stayed in his office in the mornings — then swallowed hard when he turned into her office.
“Good morning,” he said.
She smiled. “Good morning.”
He lowered himself into one of the chairs on the other side of her desk, and she had an image of the last time he’d entered her office to speak privately, the flash drive he’d set on her desk, the victorious shine in his eyes.
There was no victory in his eyes now. He was outwardly more composed than he’d been during his outburst on Friday, his hair combed and smooth, his suit unwrinkled, tie crisply knotted, but she could see the strain in the pinched hold of his mouth, the lines around his eyes that seemed a little deeper. He looked like he’d aged five years overnight.
“You okay?” she asked him.
She was surprised to find that it wasn’t all an act. That she still cared if Jason was okay.
He leaned back in the chair and crossed an ankle over the other knee, then steepled his fingers across his torso as he studied her.
“Are you?”
“Of course. Why?”
Adrenaline surged through her bloodstream, her face flushing as she waited for him to answer. This wasn’t what she’d expected: Jason calm and unflappable, as if the events of the day before had been her imagination.
“I know yesterday was… dramatic,” he finally said.
She forced herself to smile. “Sometimes life is dramatic.”
He studied her face, then stood and walked to the wall of glass overlooking the casino and city below.
Wages of Sin: Las Vegas Syndicate Book Two Page 12